Two Weeks (The Baxter Family #5)(30)

A few weeks later they were contacted about a drug baby, an infant born to a heroin-addicted mother. She had left the hospital after the delivery. Since then the tiny boy had been hooked to a morphine pump to help wean him off the drugs. The newborn spent every minute shaking and crying and even convulsing as his little body struggled to overcome his addiction. He was still in the hospital, no family at all.

“He’s been here twenty-one days,” the social worker had told Aaron and Lucy on a conference call. “The need is urgent. If you could come get him, we think you’d make the best home.”

Dizziness and sorrow and elation had swept over Lucy all at once. “Twenty-one days?” The situation was horrific. The poor baby. “You’re telling us this baby has been in the hospital on a morphine pump for three weeks with no mother, no one to claim him?”

“Yes.” Discouragement marked the man’s voice. “It’s fairly common. The addiction is broken at this point, which is why he needs a home.” He paused. “Anyway, I have a feeling his mother’s rights will be terminated very quickly.”

Lucy and Aaron didn’t hesitate. This many years later she could still remember how her heart had bonded with that little drug-addicted baby boy—even before she first laid eyes on him. They left work immediately and drove by Target. A car seat, a bag of diapers, a few baby clothes, and they raced to the hospital.

The child was beautiful. Pink skin and a head full of dark hair. Since they were licensed, and since the baby was a ward of the state, the process hadn’t taken long. They simply packed him up, strapped him in the new car seat and signed the papers. Just like that they had a baby in their home.

A child of their own.

Because of the drugs there were long nights with little Rio. Lucy didn’t mind one minute of it. She rocked him and sang to him and together with Aaron took turns feeding him and diapering him. All the while they thanked God that He had given them a baby to love. A child to raise.

Sure there was the possibility the baby might not be allowed to stay, that the potential adoption could fall through. But Lucy and Aaron never even talked about that. How could the state give little Rio back to his mother? It wasn’t possible. That’s what they told themselves.

Friends from church came by and brought a portable crib and more clothes and a stroller. Each time, Lucy and Aaron admitted that no, the paperwork wasn’t final. But their social worker had been sure the baby would be theirs. “It’ll happen,” Aaron would say. “He’s ours.”

But six weeks later the baby’s maternal grandmother contacted Rio’s social worker. She was distraught at the reality that her daughter had delivered a baby and left him at the hospital. She explained how she hadn’t known her daughter was pregnant, and how her daughter hadn’t been home since her raging heroin addiction began.

Their social worker had no choice but to verify the woman’s claims. And every last detail checked out. Ten days later, Aaron and Lucy packed up the baby clothes and diapers and infant gear, strapped Rio into his car seat and took him to the social worker’s office.

Lucy could still remember holding Rio to her chest and telling him goodbye, cradling him as her tears fell on his soft cheeks. She had made a photo album of his baby days at their house, a gift she sent on with him. So he would always know what he looked like his first two months of life. Next to her, Aaron had quietly wept. Cried harder than she had. Rio was his boy.

Neither of them knew how they’d survive saying goodbye.

The memory lifted. Lucy felt the familiar ache in her heart.

Enough.

She stood and smoothed out the wrinkles in her uniform, her eyes still on baby Nathan. As long and sad and painful as her own story was, remembering it only made things worse. She studied the tiny infant in his incubator bassinet. “It’s okay, sweet boy. You’re going to make it.” She leaned in and cooed the words near the part of the hood where her voice could get through. “Keep fighting, Nathan.” And there just for a moment—she could see baby Rio again, hear his pained little cry.

She could feel him in her arms, his warm, helpless little body pressed against hers. Little Rio. The son she would always love. The baby she hadn’t told her new friend Brooke about.

And for a single instant she remembered what it felt like walking out to the car that day at the social worker’s office without Rio. How she had known then that something would forever be missing. Because she had left a piece of her heart with that sick baby boy.

A piece she would never get back.





9




Elise felt like she was losing her mind. She couldn’t be pregnant, couldn’t have Randy’s baby growing inside her. The more she thought about her ex-boyfriend, the more she knew there was nothing normal about their relationship.

Not even for the bad girl she’d become when she was with him.

Now, there was no way she wanted Randy’s baby. He didn’t want a child, either. He’d made that very clear.

But more than a week after telling Cole that she might be pregnant, she still didn’t have her period. Her nausea and vomiting were worse, and she still hadn’t told her mother about any of this. She couldn’t. Her mother would be crushed.

She had avoided going with Cole to the local crisis pregnancy center. The thought of it made the entire situation too real. Still, she had to find out, so that day, after school was out, she began walking to Walgreens for a pregnancy test. Snow was falling, and Elise didn’t have her warmest coat. But she didn’t care. She had to know if she was pregnant or not.